Twitter Updates

Galloway won a surprise stunning victory at Bradford West, where the ethnic/age profile of the electorate is not so very different from that at Rotherham. Ridley’s tweets indicate that she and Respect are using the same strategy, namely helping young first time Muslim voters to sign up with their help to vote by postal ballot for Respect. This strategy won in Bradford West.

@yvonneridley out on the stomp: “Just met some first time voters in Masbrough & they said they’ll vote #respect. Brill. ” #Rotherham

The Islamists associated with the Ramadhan Foundation and Mohammed Shafiq have also been pushing a candidate called Mahroof Hassain (one of their number) as an entryist Islamist Labour candidate. They’ve also been doing an Islamist advance on the local Labour Party. They weren’t successful but did a staged walk out when he wasn’t adopted. Here’s the narrative they’ll be spinning:

100 memberswalkout as @mahroofhussain not selected the only winner now likely tobe @yvonneridley another @respectpartyuk upset in the making

Here’s another line they and the Islamist support crew from all over the UK are going to be running in the campaign:

Ibrahim Hewitt ‏@ibrahimhewitt56@yvonneridley is standing for Respect in Rotherham by-election caused by resignation of Zionist Denis Macshane. Go for it Sis!

I wonder how the Jihadis and Respectniks ardently campaigning for Ridley will square her present persona with her actual history? Her current Wikipedia entry will tell you that she’s been married twice; her first husband was a PLO intelligence officer, and her second husband a detective with Northumbria police.

But dig around finding some of the press coverage from 2001 of her capture in Afghanistan, and you’ll find this:

Ridley’s trip to Afghanistan was more than her mother, Joyce, could cope with.More unforgivably, Ridley put her nine-year-old daughter, Daisy, through a rollercoaster ride of emotions. Perversely, the Express and other papers madeDaisy the main story. “Give me my mum back,” said the Sunday Express front-page headline. Ridley wrote in her first report after her release, “Today I’m lookingforward to Daisy getting cross with me because she didn’t know mummy had gone to Pakistan.”

What all this had to do with understanding Afghanistan’s people-Ridley’s motive for making the trip-was not clear. It certainly didn’t help the plight of her two Afghan guides who could be imprisoned for 15 years.

The British press did not to take kindly to Ridley. Alice Thomson, writing in the Telegraph, said: “By entering Afghanistan, she didn’t just jeorpardise herown life, she caused an extraordinary amount of trouble for everyone else.”

At first the Taliban thought she was an American spy. “Amreca! Amreca!” they cried, as she was paraded through the streets of Jalalabad. It wasn’t as wild an allegation as it first seemed.

The press were asked by the British ministry of defence not to report this, but up until three years ago, Ridley was a captain in the Territorial Army.

The most recent of her three ex-husbands, Ilan Hermosh, was less easy to silence. An Israeli citizen who runs a restaurant, he told Israeli Army Radio that he had”contacts with the intelligence services”. Besides, she had no passport or visa on her.

So, obviously, she is now single. (Ridley has been married three times: to Daoud Zaaroura, a former PLO officer and the father of her teenage daughter, Daisy; to a policeman; and to an Israeli businessman.) ‘No, I am actually married.’ For the fourth time? ‘Yes.’ She won’t tell me her husband’s name, though after a 20-questions-style routine, I find out that he is an Algerian she met ‘at various events’, and that he is ‘amazing … so far’. Under sharia, she was able to write her own wedding contract, in which she put down her hopes and expectations and even her exit strategy, were it to be necessary. What are her hopes and expectations? ‘For a happy, stress-free, committed marriage.’

Good luck with that…

It certainly helps your election chances with Respect on a ferociously anti-zionist ticket if you can forget that one of your husbands was an Israeli with, errm, contacts with Israeli intelligence, and on a ferociously anti-British-forces-in-Afghanistan ticket if you can also forget that you spent some years as an officer of the British Territorial Army….

Mind you, if she does get elected, will her fellow MPs have to address her as "the Honourable and Gallant Member for Rotherham"? It's a mind-boggling thought.

UPDATE

Helen Pidd in The Guardian reports the Great Walkout as if it was just some random group of members. This was in fact an organized display of intimidation by the Islamist entryists associated with Mohammed Shafiq and the Ramadhan Foundation, as can be seen very clearly from a look at Shafiq’s Twitter timeline, and those who retweet and exchange links and other tweeter names with him. Pidd presents the unsuccessful Islamist candidate Mahroof Jussain as just a very popular local Councillor who inexplicably failed to get selected. Where did she get her information about his popularity. Why didn’t she mention his connections with Islamist extremists?

She also fails to tell the Guardian's readers that this apparently dedicated popular local candidate also previously tried to get adopted as Middlesbrough's Labour candidate, supported on Twitter by the very same tweeters who were to go on and push Hussain as the popular choice at Rotherham.

What is mind-boggling is the dual involvement of the Ramadhan Foundation Islamist grouping in trying to insert and push Islamist candidates onto both the Labour and the Respect ticket. We all know about entryism, but this appears to be double-entryism. They are clearly organizing to get and recruit voting by Muslims, especially young first time voters, for Islamist candidates, and will push the emphasis wherever they think they are likely to win. They will also try and make the election debate at Rotherham a combination of capitalization on MacShane’s frauds and related “anti-zionism” plus Muslim grievances.

It’s also worth remembering that Rotherham is part of a Euro MEP super constituency which voted in a BNP member (amongst others) on a very low turnout. It was the BNP that took the action that led to MacShane’s expenses frauds being acted on, and they are going to work very hard to capitalise on that in the by-election.

There is very little time for Labour to organise. The Islamists have been organizing themselves for such opportunities for a long time.

Nobody, but nobody dreamed that Galloway would take Bradford West. Everyone of course was wise after the event.

There is plenty to attack Labour with apart from MacShane. Getting the vote out may be correspondingly difficult.

On 24th October, Tom Watson MP made sensational allegations, speaking in the House of Commons under the protection of Parliamentary privilege, of about evidence of a past paedophile ring linked to an aide of "a former Prime Minister" and a "powerful paedophile network" linked to No 10 at that time. In his blog, he added that the person in question was not Sir Peter Morrison, now dead and beyond the threat of libel actions, but unmistakably linking the accusations to Margaret Thatcher's Premiership.

Meanwhile, in Labour Rochdale, centre of a major child abuse scandal involving the abuse of young women in care in the town is currently under scrutiny in Parliament.The HoC Home Affairs Select Cttee in the very week following Watson's intervention grilled the senior Social Services professionals in Rochdale, and their bland "I didn't know, I wasn't told, I did everything I should" responses were remarkably similar to Entwistle's just before he resigned as Director-General of the BBC. What were the Labour MP and Cllrs doing during the period? Meanwhile, a Rochdale health services worker claimed that the abuse is still continuing, yet this astonishing testimony got little national coverage with the "Tory high-up paedophile" scandal running at full tilt.

A high profile by-election imminent is in the Labour seat of Rotherham, which manages to combine an almost identical running child abuse of girls in care scandal like Rochdale's, but where the by-election is happening because the Labour MP Denis McShane was forced to resign after being found to have fraudulently claimed thousands of pounds of expenses. The latter item was beginning to gain traction in the press just as Watson dropped his bombshell. McShane's misdemeanours sank into the back pages once "Tory paedophile rings" got taken up as the main story by media and BBC.

Another of the by-elections is in Middlesborough, caused by the death of Labour's Sir Stuart Bell, notorious for having led the fight in the last Parliament to have MPs' expenses kept secret on a range of grounds such as "security", and to have those who leaked them prosecuted. Bell also got a lot of stick in the last few years for ceasing to hold MP surgeries for constituents in Middlesborough. It was widely claimed that this was because he was living in Paris. Bell also achieved huge publicity by going after the child protection medics in the Cleveland child abuse scandal. He could not have known whether the allegations were true or false, but got huge newspaper and BBC coverage with his claims that the allegations were false.

There are elections for Police Commissioners in all areas outside London.

Also happening within a fortnight of Watson's bombshell. Margaret Moran, ex Labour MP goes on trial for £53,000 worth of fraudulent MPs' expenses claims. She will not face a full trial (and therefore a prison sentence) because she has medical certification stating she is not fit to stand trial.

Fraser Nelson at the Spectator thinks Tom Watson's motives are unrelated to anything else other than his siincere desire to unmask child abusers in high places, all coincidentally in Tory high places. Tom Watson has not raised any questions about or even hinted at any Labour folk in high places who have been alleged to have been involved in child abuse.

Nelson Jones at the New Statesman is equally convinced of Tom Watson's sincerity, but suggests that he's working himself towards becoming yet another conspiracy theorist:

Watson seems to be demanding a virtually unlimited inquiry into establishment paedophile networks that he has already decided must exist, and into a shadowy establishment cover-up that he is also presupposing. He had already issued an open letter to David Cameron, in which he vaunted his "experience of uncovering massive establishment conspiracies" and condemned "decorous caution" as "the friend of the paedophile". He came close to suggesting that Cameron himself might have reason to be part of a cover-up: "Narrowing the inquiry equals hiding the truth. That is the reality and it is not what you want."

This is the language of the witch-hunter, the conspiracy-theorist, or the architect of a moral panic down the ages. Is it really the language of a serious politician?

That's an impressively well-informed viewpoint. On the other hand.....it's remarkably helpful, no doubt, to the Labour Party that the words "paedophile network" now seem linked in the minds of a large proportion of the electorate to the words "high placed Tory".

Are his current efforts on associating highly placed Tories with paedophilia, at a time when Labour constituencies with upcoming elections are mired with scandals associated with corruption and child abuse, a distraction from or a masterly development of his role as Labour's by-election supremo?

Be careful before you rejoice over the Hollande victory. His magic wand politics is based on selling the idea of socialism in one Eurozone-- based on getting all the other EU countries' populations also to vote socialist so they can set up a superKeynsian programme where the whole of the EU happily prints money and hands it out for whatever benefits the good citizens have become accustomed to.

Thus, he promises an instant end to austerity, job creation a la carte, restoring cuts in pensions public spending etc.

This is very appealing to electorates feeling the pinch and hating the austerities of getting rid of deficits for years ahead.

Imagine if Hollande is able to sustain this illusion for 2-3 years as first the Eurocrats indulge him in order to ensure the Eurozone doesn't break up.Then a whole series of other EU states also vote in magic wand Eurozone keynsian socialist governments, Apparently even in Germany, the votes for the Social Democrats are soaring. So then what happens if these magic wand programmes are voted for across the EU (including in the next EU elections)?

Come 2015 we could be facing Ed Miliband offering a UK version of Hollande's magic wand programme, with crowds of happy deficit fuelled populations across the EU as examples of how well the magic wand works. It means signing up to the new socialist print-as-much-as-you-want Euro. So Ed Mili is right behind an EU referendum, only this time on a "free money, end to austerity, magic wand" embrace-the-Euro programme. The Lib Dems will be enthusiastic supporters

The Tories and UKIP would then be the only parties opposing this glorious magic wand socialist vision. They'd get their referendum. But guess what? They'd lose it hands down, because the euphoria of the free money vision would be far more appealing than the Sturm und Drang of leaving the EU and yet more austerity.

If you doubt this, remember that until Livingstone dreamed up his Fare Deal magic money offer, he was hopelessly behind Boris in the polls. Once that was offered, his popularity soared. Had Andrew Gilligan & Guido Fawkes not exposed his tax avoidance and matching hypocrisy, people would have accepted his promises as credible. Once the tax evidence was out (including Livingstone's failure to deliver on his promise of publishing his accountant-certified tax records) and widely exposed, people stopped believing in the magic beans fare reductions. Boris' popularity and credibility recovered, but the gap between him and Livingstone never went back to what it was before the launch of the Fare Deal promise.

Even so, over a million people voted for Livingstone's magic wand, magic beans, free money programme and for him, knowing that he was an habitual liar and serial promise breaker.

Botis and his reality programme only just --just-- won. And a major reason for that was the strength of Boris' personality and personal appeal compared with the very negative features and track record of Livingstone.

67. Claim: “In each year I was mayor, anti-semitic attacks [in London] declined” (Guardian, March 26; when pressed about his poor relationship with the Jewish community)

Reality: The London figures, from the Community Security Trust’s annual reports, are as follows (reports before 2003 are not readily available online):

2003: 215 2004: 311 2005: 213 2006: 300 2007: 247 2008: 236As will be seen, the number of anti-semitic attacks in London rose substantially – by up to 45% – in two of these years.

Hosting extremist cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi

84. Claim: “All I knew about Qaradawi when he came was that the Sun had praised him as a true voice of Islam.” (Newsnight 4 April)

Reality: Livingstone had actually been furiously lobbied by liberal, Jewish and gay groups not to host Qaradawi. A Labour Home Office minister, Fiona McTaggart, pulled out of the City Hall event with the hate preacher, urging Ken not to meet him and saying that “a perfectly good cause had been hijacked” by Qaradawi and his supporters. The shadow home secretary, David Davis, asked Ken not to give Qaradawi “the oxygen of publicity.” When Qaradawi touched down in the UK, the Sun in fact proclaimed: “The evil has landed.”

The video clip I've included with this post shows that so many of Livingstone's present aims, especially that of establishing London as a city-state go back to the Trotskyist programme of the Socialist Action group coterie who were his highly paid enforcers when he was Mayor, and whose Simon Fletcher is the head of his campaign team today.

What a stain on the record and reputation of the Labour Party. I heard Miliband parroting Livingstone’s election promises to slash fares and restore the EMA on BBCR4 a few days ago, claiming he’d be the best Mayor for London. As they say, the fish stinks from the head.

I've never been in the least tempted to vote for UKIP-- the one-issue political party whose sole raison d'etre is to campaign against membership of the European Union.
But I've been gobsmacked by the sight of this UKIP election poster plastered here and there in odd corners I've passed in my car driving across London.

So there's Churchill, proudly invoking victory in his Homburg (hello--a European hat style) as their poster boy.

Does UKIP not know one of Churchill's most famous post-war speeches was the one where he advocated not just a European common market (as was being discussed at that time)-- but a federal United States of Europe, way beyond anything the current EU has proposed?

Here's some extracts from what he was saying back in 1946:

If Europe were once united in the sharing of its common inheritance, there would be no limit to the happiness, to the prosperity and the glory which its three or four million people would enjoy.....

Yet all the while there is a remedy which, if it were generally and spontaneously adopted by the great majority of people in many lands, would as if by a miracle transform the whole scene, and would in a few years make all Europe, or the greater part of it, as free and as happy as Switzerland is to-day. What is this sovereign remedy? It is to re-create the European Family, or as much of it as we can, and to provide it with a structure under which it can dwell in peace, in safety and in freedom. We must build a kind of United States of Europe. In this way only will hundreds of millions of toilers be able to regain the simple joys and hopes which make life worth living. The process is simple. All that is needed is the resolve of hundreds of millions of men and women to do right instead of wrong and to gain as their reward blessing instead of cursing.....

Our constant aim must be to build and fortify the strength of the United Nations Organization. Under and within that world concept we must re-create the European Family in a regional structure called, it may be, the United States of Europe. And the first practical step would be to form a Council of Europe. If at first all the States of Europe are not willing or able to join the Union, we must nevertheless proceed to assemble and combine those who will and those who can.

Of course, at that time, Churchill spoke of Britain as if it was somehow not really part of Europe. But his vision was of Britain as head of the Commonwealth. That's pointed out by some of the defenders of this campaign in the comments here. However, a key feature of the Commonwealth he advocated was one in which all of its citizens had unlimited right of immigration to Britain. It was the Conservative governments of his time and subsequently which turned to mass immigration from Caribbean and the Indian subcontinent as the answer to Britain's postwar labour shortages. Churchill did express reservations about the policy in racist terms--but it can hardly be UKIP's case that they stand behind Churchill's suggestion, towards the end of the time when he was barely able to function as a politician, that a Conservative Party slogan should be "Keep Britain White"?

So, if UKIP is going to invoke Churchill, are they going to support substituting membership of the EU with that of a Commonwealth of unlimited rights of immigration? Or are they hinting at support for Churchill's sometimes-expressed white supremacist attitudes?

The UKIP grandees like Campbell Bannerman, who picked Churchill as their poster boy, seem to have arrested their awareness of his historical role at Dunkirk, the biggest military defeat in British history, in which his role was primarily to inspire and commit Britain to fighting Nazism and totalitarianism.

David Campbell Bannerman commenting on the launch said: "Sir Winston is an ideal icon for our campaign because it is high time that Britain found that old Dunkirk spirit again and learned to fight its corner in adversity. We've accepted far too much nonsense from Brussels over the years and it is time to say NO MORE! The only way to do that at this election is to vote UKIP, as none of the old parties have anything to offer other than more Europe.

UKIP's barely concealed agenda is a decidedly Little England one. No, they're not fascists in smart suits, like the BNP. But their view of politics is simplistic, ignorant and ultimately a prescription for economic dead-endery.

They would hardly stand a chance in next Thursday's election were it not for the disastrous failure of the UK's three main political parties to confront and put a rapid and decisive end to the cosy, all-in-it-together morass of self-serving corruption through our own Parliament's expenses rackets.

I'm probably going to vote for Libertas in the EU elections, because I think trans-EU parties with a focus on accountability and a combination of commitment and scepticism are the least worst choice.

The local UK elections are more problematic. Any temptation I was beginning to have to vote Tory in protest at Gordon Brown's handling of just about any policy or crisis you care to mention has been laid to rest by David Cameron's shying away from dealing with (and sometimes open support of) those expenses miscreants of his own party he happens to be most sympathetic to.

In the past, I've resorted to voting for the Green and Liberal parties when protesting against the worst excesses of the former ultra-left Hackney Labour Council in its heyday. Looking at the policies of the Green and Liberals today, their policies seem to me a lot more disastrous than those of Labour and their politicians no more trustworthy.

I'll be looking at the other minority parties over the next few days to see if there's one I can square my conscience on registering my vote with.

Into my mailbox pops a breathless little communication from Teachers' TV telling me it's Behaviour Management week. Well, so it is. I hope the voters get their sanctions and rewards right and our politicians decide to change their ways.

It's not often you see my favourite UK left of centre blog, Harry's Place, put up posts praising the Tories, but here's David T positively gushing over the newly established anti-BNP site established by Tim Montgomerie's ConservativeHome group and allies.
Much as I would love to see this campaign succeed, and much as I admire the fact that people like Tim Montgomerie have been able to galvanise Tories & others to support this campaign, I think the first video is pretty dismal.
It offers an image of a sweet-looking Afro-Caribbean boy to counter the BNP's propaganda that our troubles are caused by supposedly unlimited immigration and their taking of our resources by people who shouldn't have the right to them. Behind the BNP's racist message is also the conviction that shadowy and corrupt Hidden Hands (yes, that's Jews like me) are behind all of this.
I don't think this approach is going to persuade a single potential BNP voter to cast their vote differently.

For a start, it insults the intelligence of the target audience, something I'd have thought media-savvy people like Tim Montgomerie are intensely aware of.

Non racist potential BNP protest voters are perfectly aware that there are very likeable people amongst the ethnic groups that are its targets. Doesn't stop them from voting for the BNP as a protest against the perceived corruption of mainstream parliamentarians, or as a protest against particular forms of maximalist minority group critiques of mainstream society (as promoted by the Hizb and the Saviour Sect).

Back in the days preceding the Nazi success in the German elections, the angry non-fascists who voted for them in 1933 mostly knew quite a few cuddly Jewish children, or dedicated Jewish doctors and the like. Some of them had close Jewish friends. All this didn't prevent them from voting against the existing traditional parties, because they thought drastic action was needed, and they didn't see anything wrong with being against Jews as a whole whilst simultaneously being very fond of the odd Jew.
Many otherwise sane and reasonable Palestinians voted for the atrocious Hamas and their exterminationist propaganda as a protest against the corruption of Fatah. They were perfectly well aware of what Hamas stood for, and they supported the two state solution, but their anger with Fatah overcame their real political convictions, because they felt they had to "do something" and bring the corruption to an end.
Non-racists who consider voting for BNP as a protest also know that if they send a few BNP MEPs to the EU Parliament and elect a few BNP councils, they will never have the power to affect the actual lives and conditions of ethnic minorities in this country. So they feel they can safely use the BNP to register a protest, or, as with non-ideology driven Palestinian Hamas voters, to take action against corruption whilst forgetting all about the baggage that comes with the protest party.
So what sort of video message might help persuade decent, ordinary people not to cast a protest vote for the BNP? Maybe something that recognises the justice of widespread public anger-- and then puts across the message that the answer to corruption isn't to cast a vote for racism, anymore than a vote for out-and-out terrorism was the answer to Fatah's corruption.
Maybe it should be a "your vote matters" video. Maybe it should show what happens to countries and peoples who cast despair votes for totalitarian and racist parties, and then contrast that with countries where the electorate took some action that voted the corrupt out (Japan?).

A video which put across the message "when you want to stop corruption, don't vote for violent criminals" would enlighten the many potential voters who don't know about the BNP's track record of convictions for appalling offences.
Most of all, all of us who are committed to the mainstream left and right parties need to put all the pressure we can on our party leaderships to come to terms with what we the people feel, and make really radical moves now that will begin to shift the public's perceptions.
Sadly, there's too much evidence that Brown and his circle, even the ministers who despair of him, are virtually incapable of radically changing their direction and stopping the corruption--and its leaders in the form of the guardians of the parliamentary expenses system right now.
Cameron made something of a move, and it has had an impact, but it's nothing like enough. Listening to Hague on BBC R4 Today programme, it's clear that the Tory hierarchy still haven't got it. He's just pushing the latest Tory line of chipping away at the bits that suit them (like the communication allowance) whilst claiming the public don't really care about the Speaker and the corrupt Parliamentary apparatus that enabled the MPs and the Lords build up their sense of entitlement to be above the laws that the rest of us live by, and line their pockets accordingly, whilst chorusing "it's all within the rules".
If you don't want people to vote BNP:
Ensure that the Speaker of Parliament resigns immediately by organizing a whipped vote of no confidence.
Sack all the members of the Parliamentary Privileges Committee and the senior staff of the Fees Office.
Only MPs with impeccable expenses claims records to sit on the Committee in future.
All MPs to place itemised expenses claims on their web sites every three months.
All claims going back to 2005 to be scrutinised by senior HM Revenue & Customs to check that they meet the test of "wholly, necessarily and exclusively" for use in their job as MPs. Claims that don't meet the test to be paid back in full and with penalty fines and interest.
Commit to prosecuting all MPs who knowingly made false claims or submitted improper accounting.
Commit to reducing the number of MPs by half in time for the next election. If practically impossible for boundary commission reasons, commit to having a second election as soon as possible after 2010 to elect the lower number of MPs
All sitting MPs to face reselection meetings with their constituency parties within the next two weeks (ie ahead of the June elections)
Legislation to be passed immediately to enable peers who breach laws on corruption to be stripped of their titles and rights to sit in the House of Lords.
Any major party that committed to that could face down challenges from the BNP and other fringe parties.
Anything else is tokenism and papering over the cracks. And it won't wash with the electorate. Those who are minded to vote BNP will still do so.

My mother may have severe dementia, but she still knows who Diana was. And this bit of 1981 royal wedding kitsch sits by her bed

It's wonderful to be able to blog from my iphone while sitting in first a cab then a car repair centre in Willesden.
The downside is that the very pretty Typepad iPhone app doesn't seem to have a "save post" option.

It's publish or nothing.

So I'll have to publish as is when they bring my car round and demystify you as to what I'm on about later.

Clue: It's about an unexpected side of the normally ultra-rationalist male bloggers who include founders and leading signatories of the Euston Manifesto.

There are a lot of legends about encounters between Napoleon and the Jews, just as there are about encounters between Alexander the Great and Jews. In both cases, the Jews' ambivalent but ultimately admiring relationship with these world-changing rulers is reflected in the substance of the tales told. They usually show the great ruler learning to admire some aspect of Jewish tenacity in adversity.

One of the ones I always remember about Napoleon is where he's reputed to have passed by a synagogue where he could hear the congregation wailing the mourning chants of the Tisha B'Av service, Tisha B'Av being the saddest day in the Jewish calendar. It's a major fast commemorating the fall on that day of the First and Second temples of Jerusalem, during which Jeremiah's Book of Lamentations is read. When it's explained to him that the Jews he hears are weeping for a loss which took place 1,800 years earlier, he's said to have said:

I vow that this people is destined for a future in their own homeland. For is there any other people who have kept alive similar mourning and hope for so many years?"

Sunday was the 17th Tammuz. For observant orthodox Jews, that's a whole day fast which marks the start of a three week period of mourning, commemorating the beginning of the end of the Roman siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE. It culminated in the destruction on the 9th of Av of the Second Temple and the subsequent expulsion of the Jews from their homeland. Most mainstream Jews hardly know of this three week period, though all know of Tisha b'Av, but for those who do, it has some surprisingly effective ways of opening your heart to the sorrows it commemorates. You are not supposed to play or listen to music--and that makes a huge difference in my daily life. You are also supposed to refrain from buying new clothes and cutting your hair. Usually I remember to get mine cut just before the three week period starts. This year, I lost the plot and didn't get it done. So I'll look rather scruffier than I usually do for the next three weeks.

Unlike the major fasts of Tisha B'Av and Yom Kippur, the Fast of 17th Tammuz is one of those you usually observe individually rather than communally.

When I went to the synagogue, I heard the mother of one of the youth group organizers say that they hoped they might get perhaps twenty people attending. By the time the service started, it was packed--even more women than men, with some of them having to stand.

It was quite a low key event, but I was conscious from having spent so much time since the prisoner exchange following the reactions of the UK, Israeli and international media, as well as Israeli bloggers, of the collective sadness that for once united the secular and the religious Israeli public, all too often a non-dialogue of the deaf.

On the same day, Imshin, who, like so many secular Jews, tends to find her spiritual sustenance in Buddhism rather than Judaism, was visiting Jerusalem, and found herself walking up the steps of part of the destroyed Temple. That experience connected with her in a way that I wouldn't have expected:

Here I was standing at the foot of the actual steps that led up to the Second Temple all those years ago. It wasn’t just an old story. It wasn’t a myth. It really happened. And I am a descendant of these people who came to this place to worship....

I always get a bit teary at the Wall, and I’m never sure why. Friday was no exception, standing at the foot of those steps.

I always thought it was all this spirituality in the air that got to me. But perhaps it’s something deeper than that.

When we went over to see Robinson’s Arch , or what’s left of it, the enormity of the destruction really hit me and I was very sad. This has never happened to me before. I must have needed to be able to envision this as a real place, for me to begin to understand the terrible tragedy of what happened back then.

These are actual stones from the outer wall of Herod’s Temple, bearing the distinct features of Herodian masonry, excavated just as you see them, apparently toppled by the Romans when they destroyed the Temple.

And as these things always happen, today was the 17th of Tamouz, believed to be the day the Romans broke through the city walls (among other things), all those years ago (precisely 1938 years I think, if I’m not miscounting).

Then I checked out Karen's Tel-Aviv Diary, as I usually do. She's also a militantly secular Israeli, but being the daughter of Yiddish speaking Holocaust survivors and a fluent Yiddishist herself, she's closer to the traditions of the religion than you might imagine. She is bearing so much beyond the collective grief over the outcome of the prisoners' return-- a tragic family bereavement, the loss of a young nephew after a cruel illness, a husband undergoing chemotherapy, and more.

And in memory of the young man, but perhaps also all the public collective grief over the dead hostage soldiers, she put up on her diary blog a poignant, searing poem by Yehuda Amichai which she had long ago translated. Her translation appeared in the Tel-Aviv Review in 1998, which most English readers, including myself, have no knowledge of.

It commemorates the death--possibly also after a long period of struggle--of someone close to Amichai and yet it also commemorates the pain of some of the legacies that all Jews share.